Nokia’s high-profile ‘Comes With Music’ service has reportedly only attracted 23,000 subscribers in the UK. The figures, reported by the BBC, were stated by Music Ally’s Paul Brindley at an Association of Independent Music conference in London. The BBC notes that Brindley described the statistics as a “big disappointment” to the music industry. “If anything I was rather kind in not saying it was a complete catastrophe. It’s a big disappointment because very rarely, if ever, have we seen a digital music service that’s been so widely promoted in the mainstream media.” Nokia Music’s head of product marketing, Tim Grimsditch, said the company was unable to confirm the numbers as Nokia had not released them. “It’s a very new business model, we’re live in five markets and the numbers only mention one. We’re going to continue to develop the model and fine tune how we market it.” According to the BBC report, Grimsditch said he was confident Nokia would have “significant successes” to report from the service in six months time.

Comes With Music is an unlimited music download service that differs from rival offerings by allowing users to keep their music when their subscription ends. It is currently live in the UK, Singapore and Australia, with Italy, Sweden and Mexico either live or soon to be launched. First reports of struggling UK sales appeared in January. mocoNews yesterday noted that Nokia claims Comes With Music users download between 200 and 300 tracks on average in the first few weeks, and typically download from seven genres compared to the typical customer of the Nokia Music Store, who downloads from three genres. Last week, during its first-quarter results, Nokia said its new strategy of focusing on Internet services was working, citing more than 3 million cumulative shipments of its first mass-market touch screen device – the 5800 Xpress Music model that also supports its Comes With Music service – since launch in late November 2008.